Shifting Social and Gender Norms in Conflict-affected Settings: Practical Skills for Effective Social and Behavior Change

In conflict-affected and post-conflict settings, harmful social and gender norms are often exacerbated, limiting access to health, protection, and empowerment opportunities for vulnerable populations. This interactive two-hour workshop equips SBC practitioners with practical skills to understand, measure, and shift harmful norms that are barriers to health behaviors under conditions of instability. Using real-world examples from East and Southern Africa, including interventions focusing on sexual and reproductive health, and gender-based violence prevention in conflict-affected communities, participants will explore approaches to norm-shifting that are safe, contextually sensitive, culturally relevant and adaptable to fragile environments. Participants will leave with actionable tools for integrating norm-shifting SBC strategies into designing, implementation, and monitoring in fragile contexts. By combining theory, experiential learning, and peer collaboration, the session provides a practical roadmap for embedding norm change into effective SBC programming, while strengthening resilience and collective capacity within health and social systems to respond to complex challenges and emerging social and gender norms in conflict-affected communities. 

This two-hour workshop will be adapted from the self-paced virtual course, Shifting Social and Gender Norms from SBC Learning Central.